Fruit juice, honey and similar sweeteners having a relatively high level of reducing sugar content, when exposed to the atmosphere will become sticky. Coating made up substantially of fruit juice concentrate tends to be hydroscopic in nature juice and absorbs water when left open to the atmosphere. This water absorption causes clumping of the cereal in as few as 4-6 hours of exposure to the atmosphere.
Attempts have been made to sweeten cereal products with more natural sweeteners such as fruit juice. However, these attempts have proven unsuccessful because of the afinity of the fruit juice coated cereal particles to stick together resulting in formation of large clumps of cereal within the boxes and the inability of the package product to flow.
It has been known to use pectin in cereal. However, its uses have been restricted to acting as a thickening agent, a stabilizer and/or to create a desirable food texture. Pectin has never been used to reduce the clumping of cereal products coated with syrups having high levels of reducing sugars.
For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,501,759 by Gajewski discloses a coated cereal Product which contains from 0.1% to 5% pectin in the coating. The pectin serves the purposes of maintaining aspartame in suspension, binding aspartame to the surface of the comestible, and distributing the aspartame evenly over the comestible. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 4,565,702 by Marky et al. discloses a dietary fiber composition containing low methoxy pectin as n insoluble fiber. The pectin coating serves as a non-digestable portion of the fiber which provides bulk due to its hydrophilic nature, and further it makes the dietary fiber composition organoleptically pleasing.
The incorporation of low methoxy pectin into fruit juice concentrates as a gelling agent was also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,605,188 by Baker. These concentrates are capable of being reconstituted to produce beverages or gelled to produce jellied desserts.
The present invention solves the clumping problem associated with coating cereal with sweetening syrups having high levels of reducing sugars such as fruit juice, in a novel manner not disclosed in the prior art.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to produce a non-sucrose sweetened cereal.
Another object of the present invention is a process for sweetening cereal with fruit juice.
A further object of the present invention is to significantly decrease the clumping associated with fruit juice coated cereals.